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Sunny, happy Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) is the new leader of the Toros, the cheerleading squad of Rancho Carne, an affluent San Diego high school that has lousy football players but one hell of a cheerleading team. National champions, they're the ones who bring in the bodies to the football games with their award-winning moves and sassy grace, and they're poised to take their sixth national cheer title. Torrance's new reign as cheer queen, though, is cut short when she discovers that her snotty, duplicitous forerunner was regularly stealing routines from the East Compton Clovers, the hip-hop influenced cheerleaders of a poor inner city school, and passing them off as the original work of the Toros. Scrambling to come up with a new routine for the Toros--and do the right thing by giving the Clovers their due--Torrance butts heads with the proud and understandably wary Isis (Gabrielle Union), the leader of the Clovers, who wants nothing to do with a rich blond white girl, but does want to get her squad to the championships. Problem is, only one team can take home the national title. Who's it gonna be?

An unexpected box-office hit in the late summer of 2000, Bring It On is a smart, snappy teen comedy that bristles with good cheer (literally) and lively, down-to-earth characters. The story may be fairly predictable (who's going to win the big championship?), but director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jessica Bendinger have fleshed out their characters with formidable strength and provided them with sharp dialogue. Dunst is a radiant comedian, projecting warmth, determination, sincerity, and a sublime airheadedness, and Union is an impressive dancer and counterpart to Dunst, matching her admirably despite her limited onscreen time. An excellent young supporting cast rounds out the film, most notably Eliza Dushku (Faith of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Jesse Bradford (Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill) as siblings new to Rancho Carne, who become Torrance's best friend and potential new boyfriend, respectively. All in all, a pleasantly surprising and intelligent teen movie. Don't miss the opening sequence, a hilarious send-up of all those high school cheerleading routines you had to sit through at boring pep rallies. --Mark Englehart

Most helpful customer reviews

To be fair, this cheery travesty of a movie had the potential to be several different kinds of movies.It could have been a hilarious satire on the rah-rah spirit behind the odd concept that cheerleading is a sport in itself, and there were flashes of this at times. It could have been a serious movie about the effort and dedication it takes to become the best at something, and there were more than a few flashes of that. It could have also been a "Rocky" or "Karate Kid" type movie where the underdog fights against all odds to come out on top, and it seems that was what the filmmakers were aiming for, but they picked the wrong characters for the leads for us to root for that.What we end up with though is mere hints of all of the above, and no follow-through on any consistent theme. The first 30 minutes of the film have several satirical gags about the cheerleaders but then insists that we take them seriously later on. I spent close to the entire movie trying to decide whether I should be rooting for the central characters or their rivals.The acting isn't bad and the cheer routines are done well. They may even be the most entertaining part of the entire movie. There are several laughs, mostly in the first part of the movie. After that it gets dull and plodding. You never get to know any of the secondary characters at all, which wouldn't be a problem in a satire but is a problem when the movie starts taking itself seriously.Overall, a seriously mediocre movie, and the sad part is that it had the potential to be so much better if someone would have decided what the hell they wanted to do.

I love Bring It On. I had never gotten around to watching it until I found out Eliza Dushku was in it, and I was thrilled to discover that this film delivers all kinds of great stuff, plays out on a level far above that of most "teen comedies," and (lest we not forget) features a bevy of beauties in cheerleading outfits. Personally, I think every movie should work a few cheerleaders into the script, but until that happens I have Bring It On to make the wait a little easier. I've never really been a big fan of Kirsten Dunst, but now I have figured out why: I really hadn't seen any of her movies. Dunst, as Torrance Shipman, makes a perfect head cheerleader - bright and perky, yet committed to her sport and a great human being. That's why, when she finds out that the cheers that led her Rancho Carne Toro cheerleaders to five consecutive national championships were stolen from the local inner-city East Compton Clovers squad, she is mortified. Having already learned all of their routines, her fellow cheerleaders, with the exception of the new girl in town, Missy Pantone (Eliza Dushku) don't seem to care - not until the Clovers show up at a Rancho Carne football game (if you can call what the incompetent team does out on the field football) and basically calls them out. Torrance goes to great lengths to reinvent her squad, yet her plans blow up in her face at the regional competition. Granted a spot in the nationals thanks to their previous championship, the team has three weeks to come together and "bring it" for a national championship face-off with the Clover squad.Read more ›

This is a smart and frequently funny "teen" film in the same vein as "Sugar and Spice" and "Clueless." I recommend seeing both of those films as well. I was at the age of 32 when I first saw this for rental at my local video store and I was very reluctant...but the critical reviews were good, and Kirsten Dunst is looking incredibly sexy on the cover, so...here I am writing a glowing review for what I initially thought would be a steaming pile of lame adolescent humor with mediocre writing. The humor is a combination of wit and sexual innuendo, and the writing is...dare I say it..."exceptional?" The writing is well thought out and snappy, cerebral and sexy. I actually cared about all the characters here, and snickered at the ones that appalled me. If nothing else, (guys?) Eliza Dushku and Kirsten Dunst are both alluring and attractive, physically and intellectually. What is going on these days, anyway? The "teen-comedy" genre is now wittier and more intelligent than most adult fare? YES!!! Apparently, it is true. Give this movie a shot if you want to be pleasantly surprised.

OK, I will admit that I watched this for one and only one reason: I'm a major fan of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and I thought it would be fun to see a film with two major characters from BUFFY in a different context, Eliza Dushku (Faith) and Clare Kramer (Glory, the hell goddess from Season Five and the second blonde lead in this one after Kirsten Dunst). I was surprised that the film actually stood up on its own. No question a lot of this is due to the fact that the leads are talented. Kirsten Dunst has since begun to develop into one of the hot actresses in Hollywood, and Eliza Dushku has been a scene-stealer in everything she has been in. In BUFFY, there wasn't a moment when her Faith didn't dominate every scene she was in, and while she hasn't yet really gotten the kinds of roles she should, one can't help but feel that, as they say, her future is in front of her. Gabrielle Union, who plays the head of the inner-city cheerleading squad, is also a very charismatic performer. To be honest, all of them are a lot better than this movie, but they all conspire to make what might have been a pretty average picture very decent indeed.The pretext of the film is a mainly white (with token Asians) high school is five time national cheerleading champions, despite the fact that their football team is hideous (at the football game, the fans lamely applaud the football team, but passionately greet the cheerleading squad). Unknown to the members of the squad, however, they have managed this under their former captain by stealing routines from an underexposed but extraordinarily talented inner city high school, where she would go to film their routines.Read more ›